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Earth Day: We've come a long way in 40 years

40th Earth Day is an opportunity to see how far we have come — and how far we still have to go

(Tim Brinton / Newsart)

By David Israelson

Thu., April 22, 2010

Earth to Canada: what happened?

As Canada and the rest of the world observe the 40th annual Earth Day today, it's a reasonable question, unfortunately perhaps.

But the answer may be surprisingly encouraging. It's easy to castigate Canada, particularly Stephen Harper's Conservative government, for moving from environmental leader to environmental laggard, but it's not entirely accurate.

We're talking about the entire country, at least one generation and in fact, the Earth. So we have to look at the big picture. In truth, we have come a long way in four decades from the first Earth Day in 1970.

In that year, environmentalism was still a faddish curiosity. Earth Day 1970 was an interesting phenomenon in Canada, a big deal in the United States. It was promoted by a U.S. senator, Gaylord Nelson, and pulled together by a full-time organizer, Denis Hayes, with a young, energetic staff.

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People knew about water pollution, smog and litter, but the feeling was that these concerns took a back seat to major issues of the day, like the war in Vietnam. So Earth Day was conceived as educational — a series of “teach-ins” at campuses across the United States, with demonstrations and marches in major cities.

Hayes and his U.S. organizers managed to persuade New York City to close Fifth Avenue to cars for the day; they also drew huge crowds to the streets in Washington. Then-U.S. president Richard Nixon actually invited Hayes and his organizers into the White House, but they declined — times were tense and this was just weeks before the fatal Kent State University shootings in Ohio.

In Toronto in 1970, Earth Day was more muted, more Canadian if you will. Pollution Probe, then a fairly new organization, hit the streets with information for passersby, and some members of the Ontario Legislature handed out phosphate free detergent, with one cabinet minister talking about maybe, someday, banning no-return bottles (it never happened).

That was about as far as environmentalism went back then. But it was an awfully big start. Anyone tempted to be cynical about whether this matters today should look at how far we have come. Yes, we have a long way to go, but we have achieved a lot, too.

Today there is real, measurable progress on a number of fronts. The air is cleaner in our cities than it was in 1970. Acid rain, while not exactly gone, is subject to controls on both sides of the border. There is a greenbelt of protected land in southern Ontario the size of Prince Edward Island. Vast new parks have been created, by Ontario, by other provinces and by successive federal governments, even Stephen Harper's.

It's tempting to be cynical but it's useful to remember that many of the protections and laws we have in place now got their start with Earth Day 1970. Before that there were no government environment ministries, and more importantly, there was no environmental assessment system.

Now, if you want to develop a project — a factory, mine, dam, road, power plant or building — you have to provide research on the potential environmental impact. The argument today is whether the research is enough, or whether it's being heeded; before 1970s the debate was over why it even needed to be done.

By many measures, Canada is falling behind. Our national climate change policy is, well, there is no policy — federal Environment Minister Jim Prentice has indicated that we will wait to see what the U.S. does on an emissions cap-and-trade system.

We also don't seem to have a clue about how we will really contend with the impact of Alberta's oil sands — measures such as carbon capture and storage are being tested, but we desperately need results before we go too far.

And despite land-use protection, such as Ontario's greenbelt, urban sprawl continues, bringing traffic congestion and more pollution while we bicker about transit lines that won't even fill the gap when they're done.

We should do more. But let's pay attention to what we've done and take it from there. Earth Day has gone from a call to action, to a marketing tool to a teaching moment, so let's take the opportunity to learn.

David Israelson, a Toronto communications consultant, is a former environment reporter for the Star.

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